Birth by Fire

Birth by Fire is a short RPG about Aarden with his friends keeping the road safe from monsters and bandits while his sister, Lucinda, runs an inn inside the dying town of Einadale. The town is really dying because the population of the town is only seven people, including the four playable characters.

Story
At first, the story was non-existent. It’s just “clear the road for me, so maybe someone would come and stay at our inn”. There is nothing really going on at the early part of the game. But, when you reach the latter part, the story starts to build up. The protagonist messes around within the wrong neighbourhood and starts to anger someone really powerful. I won’t spoil much, but the latter part is much better than the early part. It is not perfect. but I can feel the developer having fun when making the story.

I am sorry sir, but it seems the monster is still standing beside you.

Gameplay
You defeat all enemies in the map to progress the story. Because the enemies do not respawn, you have a limited source of gold and exp. The battle uses a side view battle and visually, it lacks the flashy elements. But, after playing for a while you would start to ignore the lack of flashiness and start to look at the battle system. The battle system is the strong point of this game. There are three rows where you can place your character. The front row would most likely receive a melee attack, the middle would likely receive a ranged attack, and the back row is the safest place with the exception of AOE magic attack.

It's not much, but I love it when they display the potential damage you would inflict to the enemy.

In this game, leveling up does not increase the protagonist's stats but they acquire AP every time they gain level. AP can be used for increasing the protagonist's stats of your choice. So you could make a normal balanced party or make everyone into glass cannons. There are unlimited possibilities for making your party.

Ending
Birth by Fire contains two endings which are happy ending and true ending. Personally, I think the happy ending is quite bland because it is just typical the hero defeated the bad guy and they lived happily ever after. On the other hand, the true ending has an unexpected character development. It makes me feel this game is just a small part of a larger story. Still, the blandness at the start of the game makes this ending not as impactful as it should be.

Wait, who is the main character's name again?

Verdict
This game has a really good battle system. Sadly, the other elements of this game are not as good. If you could ignore the occasional Harold appearance (which is a bug) and the quality of the mapping, I think you could enjoy this game. You just need to keep up for a while until you reach the good stuff.